The one where a Midtown restaurant fought to keep its galleria bathrooms to itself

A Williamsburg property owner who started with a one-story warehouse and brought in local artists is now trying to build a few hundred thousand square feet of commercial and maker space across from McCarren Park, and he picked the morning of the hearing to be at 250 Broadway instead. Hadi Hajar's absence didn't sink the 20 Berry Street pitch. His architect, Jay Valgora of Studio V, ran what Chair Farrah Lewis called the fastest presentation she'd ever seen, then Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents the district, pressed the real question: with a soft office market and light-manufacturing space sitting empty at nearby projects like the Kent Street development, why will this one fill up? Valgora's answer was personal. His father lost a manufacturing job, and he paid for architecture school with a scholarship, so he designed the industrial floors as small, subdividable spaces of two to five thousand square feet, built around input from the nonprofit Evergreen, instead of the big footprints that failed elsewhere. The special permit trades extra density for guaranteed industrial use, and the application cuts loading berths from eight to two, all of it off-street.

Restler used his time to extract commitments: support for the city's $15 million green-infrastructure rebuild of McCarren Park across the street, a redesign of the treacherous Berry Street bike route into Greenpoint, a spot in the new Northside Business Improvement District, and room for nonprofits in the building. Hajar said yes to all of it through his lawyer, including a stalled-but-rescheduling conversation with labor union 32BJ.

The morning's sharpest standoff was smaller. At 1325 Avenue of the Americas, the restaurant La Grande Bougerie wants to legalize 57 tables and 114 chairs in the covered Sixth-and-a-Half Avenue galleria, a privately owned public space where outdoor cafe seating isn't currently allowed. City Planning approved it unanimously, but Community Board 5 asked for one thing: a sign telling the public the restrooms are open to them. The applicant's advisor, Travis Terry, said no, citing safety and staffing, even though the bathrooms are already available on request. Down on Allen Street, Parks director Antonio Smykolakis explained why the city wants to demap a 9,300-square-foot median mall built in the 1920s and turn it into parkland so it can finally issue an RFP for a food concession with a working public restroom, the first one open on that block since the 1950s.

All three hearings closed with the items laid over. Hamilton Avenue, a residential rezoning also on the calendar, was pushed to a future meeting before testimony began.